Electronic components, and particularly electronic filters, built on substrates using microstrip or stripline technology often have on-chip circuit ground connected to a system ground plane at a different level of the chip substrate. Conventionally, without using complex flip-chip technology developed in recent years, these ground connections can be realized with via-holes, bond-wires or side-wall metallic terminations, as is shown in FIG. 1. In filter applications, these ground connections bring associated parasitic inductance which may deteriorate filter performance; especially at upper stop-bands since parasitic inductance more greatly affects higher frequency signals. This is due to the proportional relationship between inductor reactance and frequency.
In via-hole applications, more via holes that connect circuit nodes to ground may be employed to reduce the total parasitic ground inductance related to a ground connection. Since via holes may be used to more directly connect components to ground, lower total parasitic inductance can be achieved. However, the process for creating via holes is slow and expensive especially for etching processes. Similarly, in wire-bond applications, additional wires may be used to connect circuit nodes to ground. However, additional wire-bonds need enlarged bonding pad surfaces and access room to the pads. As for sidewall termination applications, typically there are four sidewalls at each side of rectangular-shaped components. Among these four sidewall terminations, typically two are used for input and output signal ports and only two terminations are for used ground connections. Consequently the number of possible ground connections is limited.